The Youngest Girl in the Fifth (23 page)

"There's the tennis tournament," suggested Lesbia.

"Yes; but I shan't have much chance for that with my wretched old racket!" sighed Gwen.

"Suppose I'd a new one, and could lend it to you?" said Lesbia quickly. "A lovely half-guinea one!"

"You don't possess half a guinea to buy one, my child!"

"But I do! I've got the money, and I'm going to get the racket I shall go to Graham's to-morrow for it."

"I thought your savings box was empty again? How in the name of wonder did you come by ten and sixpence?"

"Never you mind--I've got it, and that's the main point," replied Lesbia, turning very pink.

"But how?"

"I shan't tell you! Leave me alone, Gwen! You've no right to pry into my affairs. I never bother about yours. Let go my arm!" and Lesbia, blushing even more furiously, wrenched herself free and fled towards the house.

Lesbia seldom had secrets, so her conduct was the more astonishing. Gwen gazed after her in great surprise, half inclined to follow her and press the point; but remembering that her Latin for the next day was still unprepared, she fetched her books instead, and buried the remembrance of her sister's strange behaviour in Virgil and a dictionary.

A Day of Reckoning

Gwen went to school next morning in the jauntiest of spirits. She was satisfied with the part she had played both in organizing the fête and in helping to make it a success, and she fully expected approval from headquarters.

"This will set me all right with Miss Roscoe now," she thought. "She'll quite forgive me that business about Dick and the sweets on the strength of a 'Rodenhurst Cot'. I think I've scored considerably."

When at eleven o'clock, therefore, Gwen received a summons from the Principal, she was not at all dismayed, and presented herself in the study with a smiling face. To her surprise, however, she was hardly welcomed with the enthusiasm she expected. Miss Roscoe looked grave and annoyed, and greeted her more as if she were a culprit than a praiseworthy collector of money.

"Sit down, Gwen," she said coldly, motioning her pupil to a chair near her desk. "You can unlock your satchel and go over your accounts with me; then there is another matter that I wish to talk to you about afterwards."

Feeling decidedly chilled, Gwen produced her key. Miss Roscoe emptied the contents of the bag on to a tray, and proceeded to count the various coins. She reckoned them twice over, frowned, consulted a paper, then turned to Gwen.

"See how much you make it!" she said abruptly.

Gwen carefully went over the piles of half-crowns, florins, shillings, and sixpences, and added them together.

"I get thirteen pounds seven and six," was her conclusion.

"So do I, so we must both be correct," returned Miss Roscoe. "Now the checks that Moira Thompson received at the second gate register thirteen pounds seventeen shillings. How is it you are nine and sixpence short?"

"Am I that much short?" cried Gwen. "It can't possibly be!"

"Look for yourself," said Miss Roscoe. "The checks are all numbered. There are two hundred and fifty-one shilling admissions and fifty-two sixpenny ones. Examine the numbers on the rolls of checks left in your satchel; you will see they begin at Nos. 252 and 53. That means that you certainly issued 251 checks at a shilling and 52 at sixpence. The right amount ought to have been in your bag."

"Is there nothing left stuck in the corners?" asked Gwen, utterly dumbfounded at the defalcation.

"Nothing whatever. Look and satisfy yourself."

Gwen seized the satchel, and almost turned it inside out in her eagerness, but there was no remaining coin to be found.

"Did you give any people checks without receiving the money in return?" enquired Miss Roscoe.

"No, certainly not. I was most particular. I didn't let anybody in without paying. If they had no tickets I sold them checks. I don't see how I can be all that amount wrong."

"Unfortunately both our reckonings show the same deficit. What I want to know, Gwen, is what has become of this missing nine and sixpence?"

"I can't imagine."

"But it is your duty to account for it. You alone are responsible; and it is my duty to enquire where it has gone."

"Miss Roscoe! You surely don't think I've pocketed it?" broke out Gwen, the drift of the Principal's remarks suddenly dawning upon her.

"I say nothing except that it is a very strange circumstance that you cannot produce it. Was the satchel in your own possession the whole of the afternoon?"

"Yes--at least--yes, it was!" stammered Gwen, looking very red and confused. The remembrance had just struck her that she had allowed Lesbia to take some change from her bag, and at the same instant Lesbia's extraordinary behaviour of the evening before flashed across her mind. Could there possibly be any connection between the two incidents? The idea was so horrible that she blushed at entertaining it even for a moment.

Miss Roscoe glanced at her keenly.

"Do you assume the full responsibility for this?" she asked in a strained voice.

"Absolutely. Nobody except myself had anything to do with the gate money."

The Principal's face, which had been grave before, took a yet sterner expression.

"I am sorry, Gwen. Very sorry and most concerned. I thought I could have trusted you entirely. It pains me beyond measure to find you have betrayed my confidence."

"But I didn't take that nine and six! I didn't, indeed! I don't know where it has gone; but I haven't got it! How can you accuse me of such a dreadful thing?" blurted out Gwen indignantly.

"You can't deny the deficit," returned Miss Roscoe icily. "There is the evidence of the checks and the cash to prove it. As you are not able to account for it, I can only draw my own conclusions. As it happens, I was this very morning made aware of the reason which must have prompted your most dishonourable act."

"What do you mean?" cried Gwen with a choke in her voice.

For answer Miss Roscoe handed her a folded piece of paper. She opened it nervously. It was a bill from Messrs. Parker & Sons, Glass and China Merchants, to Miss Gwen Gascoyne, for ten shillings "to account rendered", and written at the bottom were the words: "Your immediate settlement will oblige". It seemed such a bolt from the blue that Gwen turned all colours, and her hand trembled till she nearly dropped the paper.

"Ah, you may well look conscious, Gwen! I have just learnt the full history of this most deceitful business. I have had a letter from Mrs. Goodwin, telling me that her daughter had confessed her share of it, and as another bill for the broken china had arrived for you, directed under cover to Netta, she considered it best to forward it on to me, with an account of what had occurred, as it was only right that I should know about it. She is most pained that her daughter should have been even slightly implicated in such an affair, and Netta herself seems truly to regret countenancing the deception and screening you. I had a talk with her before school this morning. I cannot exonerate her, but she is at least sorry for her conduct. With this knowledge of your debt, Gwen, and your reasons for concealing it, of course I realize plainly enough why you have been foolish and wicked enough to take some of the gate money. No doubt you yielded to a desperate temptation; you had much better make a clean breast of it."

Gwen was trembling so greatly that she could hardly utter a reply. Several times her white lips framed the words before she gasped out:

"I did break the china, and I owe the ten shillings for it, but I never took a penny from the satchel. I may be naughty, but I'm no thief!"

Miss Roscoe shook her head sadly.

"What's the use of persisting in denying a fact that's absolutely palpable?"

"But I didn't! Oh, I didn't!"

"It's little use arguing the matter at present, Gwen, if you take up this stubborn attitude. If you think things over, you will see it is much better to confess. I have probably startled you by springing the news upon you that I was aware of your substitution of my china tea service. When you are calmer you will be more ready to acknowledge what you have done. Go to the little music room at the head of the stairs--it is not in use this morning--and stay there until I come or send for you. Reflect seriously upon what I have said, and make up your mind to be brave enough to tell me everything."

With feet like lead, and a head that throbbed and burned, Gwen walked upstairs. The little music room was unoccupied. It only contained a piano, a stool, and a chair, and on the last-named piece of furniture she sank down wearily. Her thoughts flew so rapidly through her brain that she could scarcely regulate them. She felt as if a net had been spread for her, and had entangled her unawares. First and foremost was the sense that Netta had betrayed her. Netta, who had promised at all costs to keep her secret, had basely revealed it. She saw how cleverly her old chum had managed to whitewash herself by making a confession and feigning penitence, and how much darker this act caused Gwen's own share in the matter to appear by comparison. Naturally Miss Roscoe viewed Netta as the one with the tender conscience, and Gwen as the unrepentant sinner.

"Why didn't I tell her myself that day I meant to, and got as far as the study?" wailed the unfortunate culprit. "Then I should have been spared all this!"

Why, indeed? How many of us mourn over our past follies and cowardices, bitterly regretting the wasted moment or the lost opportunity? Gwen's fault was indeed being visited heavily upon her shoulders. She had sown the wind and reaped the whirlwind. She felt keen resentment against Netta. It was a dastardly trick to have played upon her. Netta might at least have warned her that the bill was to be sent on to Miss Roscoe--then she could have been prepared for the worst. It was surely mere spite on the part of her friend, who, having quarrelled with her, was anxious to find some means of annoying her. Netta had been jealous of her new-found appreciation in the Form, and had taken this opportunity of trying to humble her. The deficit in the gate fund filled Gwen with surprise. There seemed only one way of accounting for it, and that was so painful that she shrank from facing it. Lesbia had taken change out of the satchel, and that same evening Lesbia had acknowledged the possession of ten shillings, but had refused to reveal how she came by the money.

Gwen groaned as she remembered her sister's conscious looks and evasive replies. Could it actually be possible that Lesbia had abstracted this money? She was rather silly, flighty, and irresponsible, but she had always been truthful and honourable. No, it was surely absolutely foreign to her character! Then where had she obtained half a guinea to buy a new tennis racket? And what was the reason of her extreme embarrassment? Gwen abandoned the question in despair.

"If she really did take it, I must shield her at any cost," she decided. "She'd get into such frightful trouble, and scolding Lesbia is like breaking a butterfly. I can bear things better than she can. But--oh, dear! What am I to say to Dad if he asks me? I can stand Miss Roscoe's wrath, but I can't face making Dad look sorry."

The Principal left Gwen until one o'clock to reflect upon her sins, then summoned her again to the study, and urged her in strong terms to confess.

"I will forgive you if you only acknowledge it, but if you persist in denying it, I shall have to go more deeply into the matter," she said sternly. "I cannot allow such things to happen at Rodenhurst. It is a very grave fault, Gwen. Do you wish me to send for your father?"

"No, no!" cried Gwen hastily.

"Then will you confess?"

"I can't! I didn't do it! Oh, I don't understand!" responded Gwen, torn in two between the desire to defend herself and the fear of involving Lesbia. She did not dare to tell Miss Roscoe that her sister had taken change from the satchel, yet by that circumstance only could she account for the loss.

"Miss Douglas is as distressed as I am," continued the Principal. "I was obliged to tell her, in order to explain your absence from your classes. Here she comes now. Perhaps she will be able to persuade you better than I."

"Oh, Miss Roscoe," exclaimed Miss Douglas, entering the study with a hurried step and a heightened colour, "I have just made the most astounding discovery! I happened to look in my purse, and to my amazement and consternation I found half a sovereign which certainly ought not to be there. I am sure I know how I came by it. Yesterday, just before I went into the house to dress the girls who were to sing the Elizabethan madrigal, I bought a box of sweets from Lesbia Gascoyne. I gave her a two-shilling piece, and as she had no sixpences, she ran to Gwen to ask change for my florin. She came hurrying back, and handed me, as we both imagined, three sixpences. I put them in my purse without looking at them. Now I am quite sure that one of these supposed sixpences must in reality have been half a sovereign, given by mistake. I undoubtedly had no ten-shilling piece in my purse. The difference of giving half a sovereign in lieu of sixpence would be exactly the nine-and-six that was missing from Gwen's satchel. Let us exchange the two coins, and the deficit will be made up."

It was such a natural, simple, and self-evident explanation of the situation that its truth could not be doubted. Miss Roscoe heaved a sigh of intense relief.

"I am grateful to you beyond words, Miss Douglas," she returned. "Gwen, I am most delighted that your honour is cleared, and regret I harboured so unjust a suspicion against you. I confess it was the affair of the broken china that prejudiced me in your disfavour. It supplied so strong a motive. Why didn't you come and tell me about that right away when if happened instead of trying to settle it in such a crooked fashion? It wasn't straight and square, was it? Have I heard the whole story?"

Gwen, who had not shed a tear before, was crying bitterly now. Miss Roscoe's present kindly tone hurt more than her former severity. Almost in spite of herself the girl began to blurt put her version of how she had accidentally broken the tea service, had intended to pay for it at once, and how Emma had absconded with the money. The housemaid's part in the drama was news to Miss Roscoe, and she hastened to ask for particulars.